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Saturday, June 29, 2013

This has been brewing for a couple of days, so it’s gonna be
a long one:

You can’t tell me you were surprised by the Supreme Court’s
decision in United States v. Windsor.
I saw it coming ten years ago to the day, the day AJ Anthony Kennedy issued the
majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas.

Forget for a minute — in fact, forget forever — all
progressive triumphalism about being “on the right side of history” or “the
inevitability of change”. Let there be one defeat or one setback, and suddenly
they’re afraid the toothpaste can and will be put back in the tube.

The fact is, I knew eventually we’d see such a decision
because progressives were constantly trying to reassure conservatives that the Lawrence decision would never lead to a right to same-sex
marriage. It reminded me too much of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s gloss of the private
adventurer: “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our
spoons.”

The fact is, I knew eventually we’d see such a decision
because progressives are impatient consequentialists: they want to win now, and aren’t fussy about how it’s
accomplished.Besides, things that
progressives have said in the past lead me to suspect that progressives would
prefer a central committee made up of right-thinking people rather than any
truly representative form of government.

The Roberts Court is now as close to being that central
committee as any non-communist government can have. The problem is not simply
that, as in Lawrence, Roe v. Wade and many other cases, the
Court’s decision is sloppily reasoned due to being driven by an agenda rather
than the case’s merits. Rather, as AJ Antonin Scalia’s dissent points out, Windsor should not have come before the
Court at all. In its rush to strike down DOMA, the judiciary stepped out of its
jurisdiction.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has noticed that, in the
absence of legislation from Washington, the states are pretty much fending for
themselves. The problem is, according
to his article in the Christian Science
Monitor, “many blue states are moving further left, while red states
are heading rightward. In effect, America is splitting apart without going
through all the trouble of a civil war.”

Of course, Congressional conservative Republicans are to
blame. They’ve shut Congress down, refused to play ball with Our Glorious
Leader, and left the states to their own devices. But while this sudden absence
of power in Washington has allowed blue states to do various worthy things like
hike taxes on the rich, impose stricter gun regulations and legalize pot, it’s
also allowed the evil red states to cut education and basic services, as well
as allow anyone to carry a gun and shoot on sight.

So okay, maybe I exaggerate Reich’s liberal spin on the
issues, but that he is a liberal is left to no one’s doubt. (Professor of
public policy at UC-Berkeley? Go figure.)

“Federalism is as old as the Republic,” Reich remarks, “but
not since the real Civil War have we witnessed such a clear divide between the
states on central issues affecting Americans.” Trenchantly observed; and yet
from the tenor of what follows, it appears that Reich can’t truly grasp its
meaning. To Reich, it’s not so much that red and blue are going their separate
ways but rather that red is having a hard time getting with the national
program. Federalism is fine when Minnesota legalizes gay marriage and expands
trade-union rights, but when Arizona allows state troopers to check the
immigration status of suspected illegals, or North
Carolina puts surcharges on hybrid and electric cars …? The idea that
different values might be in play doesn’t seem to enter his mind.

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